give the hon. Member for Worcestershire (Mr. Knight) credit for his foresight in this matter. In 1861 he said, that if the House allowed the Bill to pass causing parishes to contribute to a general fund, and the poor were allowed to be irremovable in the way then proposed, Parliament could not resist maintaining all the poor by union rating and settlement. I remember the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Droitwich (Sir John Pakington) urged the hon. Member for Worcestershire to let the Bill pass, but that he objected, asserting there would be no possibility of resisting such a Bill as the present, if the measure of 1861 were allowed to pass. I only mean to show that Gentlemen opposite allowed a Bill to pass in 1861 which allowed large numbers of the poor to be chargeable upon the common fund, and the hon. Member for Worcestershire then said, and other Members knew that, if the measure were passed a measure like this could not be resisted. The right hon. Gentleman (Sir John Pakington) formerly objected to the Irremovable Bill, but now, like most men of sense, he was aware that they either must go forwards or backwards, that they could not stand where they were. It really is not a matter for further inquiry. Every question of principle has been settled, and every objection in that respect has been overcome. After what has passed, I hope, my hon. Friend will see the importance of now allowing this measure to be proceeded with, and will not persist in his Motion to transfer it to a Select Committee, which must result in the loss of the Bill, and I do trust that the House will be allowed to go into Committee upon the Bill.

it a legitimate and logical step in the pro- | all those that claim relief in the union gress of legislation on the subject. And should be maintained in the same way. I here perhaps I should call attention once again to what has been previously done to prepare the way for the legislation now proposed; for the House has somewhat lost sight of the position in which the law stands in this matter. There had been difficulties in carrying out this system of union rating, and of abolishing parochial settlement, and one difficulty had been this -that there had been a want of uniformity in the mode of assessing parishes in any given union for the purpose of rating. Some assessed themselves on one principle and some on another. There had been no uniformity in the mode of determining the rateable value of property. Parishes were required also to contribute to the common fund of the union according to the number of the poor and not the value of the property. I found that my predecessor, Mr. Baines, was very anxious to amend the law in these respects, for he found that the measure he had proposed for abolishing settlement was specially resisted owing to the great inequalities in the contributions to the rate, of which the former system admitted, and in which so many persons were interested; and he sought, by spreading the change over a considerable period of time eventually to provide for rating property equally and uniformly throughout a union according to its value. When I entered upon the office I found a Committee was sitting to consider this subject, and which having reported strongly in favour of a change, I submitted a measure to carry it out, and the Legislature having passed a Bill to meet the former defects of the law, we are now in a state in which we have a uniform assessment of property in every union, and every parish that is called upon to contribute to the general fund is assessed according to the value of property in the parish. With that change came another, that persons who had lived for three years in a union should not be removed, and that the burden of maintaining them should be cast upon a common fund. We have now then a uniform assessment of the union, and an equal contribution to the common fund, and we have a very large proportion of the poor of the union maintained from that fund. How little more is that now asked to be done, seeing what Parliament has allowed to be done already! The union poor have increased enormously, and are now supported by a common fund, it is only proposed that

EARL PERCY said, that the farmers in his part of the country were not at all favourable to the Bill, and he had received many remonstrances against the system it was proposed to introduce.

MR. THOMPSON said, when he gave his notice to refer the Bill to a Select Committee some weeks ago he expected that there would be ample time to report before the close of the Session. After the declaration of the right hon. Gentleman that there would not be time to complete the inquiry this Session, and as he had promised to appoint a Select Committee next Session, if it should be required, he would, with the permission of the House, not press his Motion.

Committee report Progress; to sit again feeling between gentlemen and farmers,

Order for Committee read and dis- Second Reading charged.

Bill committed to a Select Committee to be appointed by the Committee of Selection, in the same manner as in the case of a Private Bill.

ments were used to induce the House to throw the residuum of their works, exof Commons to accept these two mea- tended over a vast area. They sought sures; but, owing to difficulties inter-powers to increase their capital by posed, the latter Bill had been withdrawn, £1,200,000, their borrowing powers by and the present Bill was allowed to pass £400,000, and the acreage covered by unopposed. Although the River Waters their works by 100 acres. The nuisance Protection Bill did not accompany this which would thus be created had been exmeasure, yet the two Bills were so inti- posed the other evening by the right rev. mately connected and the facts by which Bishop of the diocese, and he earnestly both were supported so strong that it hoped that, either by a vote of that House, would be necessary to refer to them in order or by the decision of a Committee upstairs, to lay the foundation for the enactment of some effectual check would be interposed the present measure. It was an indisput-to the pestiferous attempts of this Comable fact that the pollution of rivers was increasing with the increase of population and manufactories, and the evil had now attained a most serious magnitude. In proof of this he might refer to the memorials addressed in March last year to the First Lord of the Treasury by three noble Lords-the Earl of Shaftesbury and Lords Ebury and Llanover-respecting the sanitary condition of rivers and streams. It was there stated that the increasing pollution of rivers and streams had become a matter of national importance, which urgently demanded the immediate attention of the Legislature; that the discharge of sewage and the refuse of factories into rivers was a source of increasing danger to the public health; and that the evil had been aggravated by the unprecedented drought of the last summer which had dried up the natural wells over a large space. It was stated in the Report of the Sewage Commission of 1861 that no fewer than 100 towns were in this lamentable condition owing to the pollution of their streams. But he need not go far to show to their Lordships the evils of this pollution, for it was to be seen in the condition of the river which flowed under the very walls of Parliament. Most of the water with which London was supplied was taken from the river, and the companies which supplied it had recently been compelled to take their supplies from above Teddington Locks, where the water was comparatively pure; but it had been given in evidence that the Thames above that point received the sewage of fifty towns, and at this moment the inhabitants of London were drinking water infected by the sewage of 800,000 persons. It had been abundantly proved that the filtration by which it had been attempted to render the water fit for use did not remove the matter held in solution. Into that noble river the Imperial Gas Company proposed, by Bill now before their Lordships' House,

Lord Ravensworth

a

pany still further to corrupt the Thames
by pouring into it their refuse and impu-
rities. The Clyde, the great arterial river
of the West of Scotland, was represented
in the Report of the Sewage Commis-
sioners as being in even a worse condition
than the Thames. York, Manchester,
Leeds, and Nottingham were all suffering
alike from the same cause. Professor
Acland, of the University of Oxford, said
that the state of the river Thames was a
national disgrace, and he described the
process of fermentation which took place
in its waters. Mr. Rawlinson spoke of the
pestilential effluvia to which the inhabitants
of Birmingham were exposed from the
pollution of the adjacent streams and the
discharge into them of large quantities of
refuse from various works. The same evils
were corrupting the health of all our large
towns, and it was no wonder that the in-
habitants prayed for some amelioration of
the evil. Such impurities destroyed the
fish in our rivers; and just as the
mephitic air in a well or mine, which
would extinguish a lighted candle, was
fatal to human life, so the destruction
of fish in a stream proved that its condition
was deleterious to human life. He hoped he
had said sufficient to induce their Lordships
to give a favourable consideration to this
Bill, inasmuch as it was likely to remedy,
to a great extent, the evils he had de-
scribed, while, at the same time, it uti
lized the sewage, which was their cause.
It was merely a permissive Bill, enabling
the local authorities of towns and parishes
to take such steps as they might deem
expedient for distributing over the land
the sewage of their respective districts
which had hitherto found its
their watercourses and streams. The Bill
would interfere with no existing rights,
and give no compulsory powers. If their
Lordships assented, as he trusted they
would readily do, to its principle, any ob-
jections which might be urged to its details

way

into

THE EARL OF LONGFORD said, the measure was one well deserving the favourable consideration of their Lordships. It was, no doubt, a supplemental Bill to the numerous Local Health Acts that had been passed of late years; but it was a strange thing that Parliament should have left this blank for so long a time as to render it necessary to fill up the void in that imperfect manner. It was a means to a good end-that of agricultural profit and sanitary improvements, and he thought it might be very properly passed by their Lordships.

Motion agreed to: Bill read 2 accordWhole House, on Monday next. ingly, and committed to a Committee of the

METROPOLITAN HOUSELESS POOR

could be more considered in Committee. | very imperfect manner, and that the details The local authorities by whom the measure would require careful consideration. would be carried out were mentioned in the schedule of the Bill, which contained many references to existing Acts, and particularly to the Public Health Act and the Local Government Act. There could be no question, from the evidence laid before Parliament, as to the beneficial effect of the application of sewage to the land, and especially to grass land. It was instructive to look at the cases of those countries where sewage was husbanded and utilized. In China, with its hundreds of millions of inhabitants, travellers told them that not an atom of refuse was lost, the rivers and streams were kept pure, and the empire was consequently enabled to sustain its immense population by its own produce. The same remarks applied to Japan. But we, on the contrary, who boasted of being the most civilized country ever known, BILL. (No. 70.)-COMMITTEE. wasted at our own doors that which might enrich our soil, at the same time pollnting EARL DE GREY, in moving that the our rivers and our atmosphere, while we House resolve itself into Committee on this sent whole fleets to the ends of the earth Bill, said, that when he moved the second to procure artificial elements of fertiliza- reading of the Bill, a noble Earl (the Earl tion. We imported enormous quantities of of Carnarvon) had asked for a short stateguano; and yet with all that we were not ment as to the operation of the Act which able to feed our people, but had to draw the present Bill proposed to continue. As from foreign countries from 14,000,000 to their Lordships were aware, before the 16,000,000 quarters of wheat and grain passing of the temporary measure on this annually. Was it not, then, worth while subject last year, the provision made for to turn our attention to these facts, and to the relief of the casual poor in London was endeavour to employ with benefit to our very unsatisfactory. The accommodation selves and relief to the overcrowded parts was very inadequate, notices were frcof the country those advantages and means quently put up that the casual ward was which were within our reach? Steps had full, and that therefore no more of these already been taken by the Government, poor persons could be admitted, while much to their credit, for the purposes of none of the wards were kept open all purifying the atmosphere of our towns, night. He was, however, happy to say and he might, by the way, embrace that that the Act of last had worked opportunity of asking why they had not well, and that there had been a marked received the Reports of the Inspectors improvement in the treatment of these appointed under the Act relating to that persons. At the present moment there subject, secing it had been provided that was adequate provision for the casual those Reports should be issued in the poor in all the unions with the exception month of March. But, returning to the of three, where the provision made was Bill which he held in his hand, it was a not sufficient. In no less than twentyfurther step in the same direction, and an endeavour to extend to the purification of rivers that which had already been attempted for the purification of the atmosphere.

Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2." -(Lord Ravensworth.)

LORD REDESDALE had not the slightest objection to the principle of the Bill, but he thought it was framed in a

year

one unions, in which previously the accommodation was very insufficient, there was now permanent and adequate accommodation; but in several of the remaining unions the accommodotion thus provided was not of a permanent character, for, as the Act of last year was only temporary, these unions had not thought right to provide permanent accommodation. Nevertheless there was no doubt that, if the present Bill passed